Exploring 3D Modeling with CINEMA 4D R19: A Beginner’s Guide

By Pradeep Mamgain

The Exploring 3D Modeling with CINEMA 4D R19 - A Beginner's Guide textbook walks you through every step of creating 3D models with CINEMA 4D R19. This guide is perfect for both novices and those moving from other software to CINEMA 4D. This book will help you to get started with modeling in CINEMA 4D, you will learn important concepts and techniques about 3D modeling which you can utilize to create hard-surfaced objects for your projects. This book shares tips, tricks, notes, and cautions throughout, that will help you become a better 3D modeler and you will be able to speed up your workflow.

The first page of the every chapter summarizes the topics that will be covered in the chapter. Every chapter of this textbook contains tutorials which instruct users how things can be done in CINEMA 4D step-by-step. Practicing is one of the best ways to improve skills. Each chapter of this textbook ends with some practice activities which you are highly encouraged to complete and gain confidence for the real-world projects. By completing these activities, you will be able to master the powerful capabilities of CINEMA 4D.

Although, this book is designed for beginners, it is aimed to be a solid teaching resource for 3D modeling. It avoids any jargon and explains concepts and techniques in an easy-to-understand manner.

By the time you're done, you'll be ready to create hard-surfaced models for your 3D projects. The rich companion website PADEXI Academy (www.padexi.academy) contains additional CINEMA 4D resources that will help you quickly master CINEMA 4D.

What are the key features of the book?

•Learn CINEMA 4D's updated user interface, navigation, tools, functions, and commands.
•Polygon, subdivision, and spline modeling techniques covered.
•Detailed coverage of tools and features.
•Contains 24 standalone tutorials.
•Contains 14 practice activities to test the knowledge gained.
•Additional guidance is provided in form of tips, notes, and cautions.
•Important terms are in bold face so that you never miss them.
•The content under "What just happened?" heading explains the working of the instructions.
•The content under "What next?" heading tells you about the procedure you will follow after completing a step(s).
•Includes an ePub file that contains the color images of the screenshots/illustrations used in the textbook. These color images will help you in the learning process. This ePub file is included with the resources.
•Tech support from the author.
•Access to each tutorial's initial and final states along with the resources used in the tutorials.
•Quiz to assess the knowledge.
•Bonus tutorials.

For more informarion, visit Padexi Academy's website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pradeep Mamgain
• Release date: May 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386131007

Book preview

CINEMA 4D R19

Welcome to the latest version of CINEMA 4D. In any 3D computer graphics application, the first thing you see is interface. Interface is where you view and work with your scene. The CINEMA 4D's interface is intuitive and highly customizable. You can make changes to the interface and then save multiple interface settings using the Layout feature. You can create multiple layouts and switch between them easily.

CINEMA 4D Interface Elements

You can start CINEMA 4D by using one of the following methods:

•Double-click on the CINEMA 4D icon on the desktop

•Double-click on a CINEMA 4D scene file

•Clicking CINEMA 4D entry from the Start menu

•Dragging a .c4d file from Windows Explorer to the program icon

•Running it from Command Prompt

•Running CINEMA 4D Lite from the After Effects

When you first time open CINEMA 4D, you are presented with the UI, as shown in Fig. 1. I have labeled various elements of the interface using numbers. The following table summarizes the main UI elements.

The CINEMA 4D interface is highly configurable. You can dock and undock windows in the main window. When you move a docked window, the surrounding windows are resized automatically. You can also display windows as tabs to save the screen real-state. You can define the arrangements of elements as layouts and freely switch between them. The fastest way to switch between the layouts is the Layout drop-down [labeled as 6 in Fig. 1] located on the top-right corner of the interface. See Video: m1vid-01.mp4.

Let's explore various components of the CINEMA 4D interface.

Title Bar

The title bar is the first element of the interface and located at the top of the UI. It displays name and version of the software as well as the name of the currently opened file.

Menubar

The menubar is located below the tile bar. It hosts almost all important commands, tools, and functions that CINEMA 4D offers. You can tear-off a menu [or sub-menu] from the menubar by clicking on the corrugated line located at the top of the menu or sub-menu [see Fig. 2].

Standard Palette

The Standard palette is located below the menubar and it hosts various tools, commands, and groups of commands. Some of the icons on the palette have a black triangle on the bottom-right corner that indicates a folded group of tools/commands.

To access the folded group of commands, hold LMB on the icon and then choose the desired command from the displayed flyout. The following table summarizes the tools available in the Standard palette:

Note: Highlighting and Selections

The selected objects are surrounded by an orange outline. If you hover the mouse over objects in the editor view, a white outline appears on the objects underneath the mouse pointer. If you are using a graphics card that is not supported by CINEMA 4D, these highlights will not appear. In case you have a supported graphics card and highlights are not appearing, you need to enable the Enhanced OpenGL option. You can access this option from the Options menu of the MEV menubar.

Tools Palette

The Tools palette is the vertical toolbar located on the extreme left of the standard interface. It contains various tools. The following table summarizes these tools: